


the heart of this star-crossed voyager

by PanBoleyn



Series: Happy Birthday, Queliot! [3]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M, Marqueliot Niffins of Timeline 31, Marriage Proposal, Missing Scene, Multi, Multiverse Shenanigans, Not S5 Friendly, Post-Canon Fix-It, Quarantine, Quentin Coldwater Deserved Better, Resurrection, Royal Quartet of Fillory, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25414900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: It's Quentin's birthday, after all.This much is true across all the stories - the question is, what's happening in each one?Good news - they all have happy endings.
Relationships: Brian/Nigel (The Magicians), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater/Margo Hanson/Eliot Waugh
Series: Happy Birthday, Queliot! [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1530038
Comments: 14
Kudos: 60





	the heart of this star-crossed voyager

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I hope this finds you well! 
> 
> So this collection of snippets came about because I was thinking about all the worlds we've created, in fic and art, where Quentin gets to live - and what better way to write his birthday than to show glimpses of that day in the various verses I've created? And so, here we are! A warning that snippet 3, 'we've come a good long way here' takes place during the Covid-19 quarantine, and multiple snippets reference Quentin's canon death. And to elaborate on the not s5 friendly tag, there is brief Eliot/Sebastian|Rupert and Eliot/Charlton negativity. 
> 
> The first and last snip are a post-canon resurrection scenario, framing the glimpses into my other worlds, [Shine Through My Memory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20169655), [Witch Oil and Marsh Fire](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1389430), [return to the sunlit lands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25043281), and [Between the Sand and Stone](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623388). Some are missing scenes, some are snippets of the future (so here be clues to my future plans!). I hope you enjoy!
> 
> As ever, thanks to all my enablers, especially Maii. :)

**_(i) long ago I should have seen_ **

“El, if this doesn’t work -” 

“Margo, it’s going to work,” Eliot says flatly. It has to, honestly, or he’s going to go mad. He knows he will. After everything - after waking up to the news of Quentin’s death, after the strange mess that was his entanglement with Sebastian/Rupert, after losing Margo for months on end until they made contact with New Fillory, after finding out that seemingly-harmless Charlton was anything but, was making full use of all he’d seen in Eliot’s head to seem  _ perfect  _ \- 

Eliot made the mistake of throwing away a letter that could have made all this much easier. He isn’t going to make a mistake this time. 

“OK. I’ll go get the others,” Margo says, leaving Eliot alone for the moment. Alone, except for the still body on the table. Not dead, not alive, not entirely real yet, but that’s still Quentin’s face, peaceful in a terrible sort of way. 

Maybe it’s a little creepy, but Eliot bends down and kisses his forehead anyway, ignoring how cool the skin feels against his lips as he smoothes back Quentin’s hair. “This is going to work, I promise,” he tells him. 

And it will. All those lifetimes because of Jane’s loops, at least one has to have a happy ending, doesn’t it? In the end, after all? 

Maybe there are others outside of what she did, caused by other people’s spells - Quentin once theorized that if time magic in general creates new realities there must be countless more, Eliot remembers teasing him about wanting Star Trek to be as real as Fillory - where they are happy already. That is a nice thought, and for a little while it was a comforting one, but it’s no longer  _ enough _ . 

And so, this spell. It has to work today, it can only work today. It’s Quentin’s birthday, after all.

Eliot hasn’t even pretended to pray for a long time, but he sends a thought like a prayer out now, not to any gods but to those other selves in other worlds that might exist where things are already happier. 

_ What has this day been like for you? Could use a little of your luck right now, if you’ve got any to spare... _

  
  


**_(ii) ‘cause people don’t really change_ **

“Happy birthday, dream boy.” 

Brian looks up from the papers he’s grading to see Nigel leaning against his office door. It is open hours for him but he hadn’t expected - 

“Did I tell you when my birthday is?” he asks, waving for Nigel to come in. 

“Yes, remember? We were talking star signs the other night.” 

Oh, right. Brian’s never put much stock in the things as an adult, but he used to read his horoscope as a kid when he did believe in that stuff, and now it’s habit. He finds it vaguely amusing when something turns out to be accurate, though of course those things are usually worded to work that way. 

“Still, you didn’t have to -” 

“God, are you always like this?” Nigel asks, rolling his eyes as he drops into the chair across from Brian’s desk, sprawling there in a way that should look ridiculous but actually just looks carelessly elegant. Honestly, it’s not fair. 

He has another of those flickers, Nigel-but-not laid out atop a design of pastel tiles, one hand pressed to his head like an over-dramatic Victorian maiden or something. He blinks and it’s gone, but being left with Nigel’s amused grin isn’t really any better for keeping his head clear. “Say I’m not,” Brian relents finally, smiling back as he sets aside his papers. 

“Well… Is it really your office hours right now?” 

“No, but it’s March, I usually keep my door open as much as possible - exams always look much closer on the other side of spring break, you know?” 

“Well, I’ve got to leave for Atlanta in two days, so I was thinking, why don’t you and I go on a little adventure?” 

Brian laughs and gets to his feet. “Why the hell not?” he asks, ignoring the deja vu that phrase gives him as he locks his office door and falls into step with Nigel on their way to the elevator.

**_(iii) we’ve come a good long way here_ **

“Quentin?” 

Quentin blinks as Eliot appears over him, looking amused. “You were zoning out there for a bit.” 

“Yeah, well, what else is there to do, except play with the cat? Who is currently sleeping?” Quentin asks, stretching along the length of the bed like a cat himself. “You banished me to the bedroom, remember?” he adds as he sits up, pushing a hand through his hair. 

“Well, I had to make the best of things to pull off a birthday surprise when we can’t leave the apartment, didn’t I?” Eliot says lightly, settling next to Quentin. “Though with the heat like this we’d probably have wanted to stay inside anyway, really.” 

“God, do you know how many birthdays I’ve spent boiling or else melting?” Quentin says. “You’re the lucky one, autumn boy. Maybe quarantine will be over by the time yours rolls around?” 

“Maybe,” Eliot says, “but in the meantime, clearly someone needs to be in a better mood about his birthday.” 

Quentin is about to make a snarky comment about how no one can be too happy in the middle of a heat wave when they can’t even leave the house, but he’s shut up by Eliot’s lips on his, a slow lazy kiss that chases all grumpiness right out of his head. “OK, that’ll work,” he says, a little dazed even after a lifetime and a year plus together in this life (and the better part of eleven months as Brian and Nigel in between). 

As Eliot pulls him to his feet, he asks, “What were you thinking about, anyway?” 

“Hmm? Oh. Brian and Nigel’s Met adventure for Brian’s birthday. Remember how Nigel had never been there -” 

“And it turned out Bri had half the place memorized?” Eliot says, chuckling. “Yeah, I remember. I used to go there often enough myself and you’ve always said you like it, once things are open again we should see who has the better memory, what do you say?” 

Quentin is a little surprised - Eliot isn’t usually nearly so at ease with the memories of their other life, but maybe this is a sign of progress. Anyway, he’s entirely distracted by the freaking night sky on their ceiling, and the picnic set-up on their living room floor. Protected, even, because Chaya is circling the area but can’t get to it. She meows at them plaintively and Quentin giggles in spite of himself before turning to Eliot.

“Now, how am I supposed to top this come October?” Quentin asks, even as he pulls Eliot down by his lapels into another kiss. Eliot just laughs at him. 

“Like you said, hopefully we can go outside by then.” 

Hopefully, but for today, this is perfect.

  
  


**_(iv) with the promise of forever_ **

Quentin has had a feeling there’s more going on all day than just his birthday. Actually, he’s suspected it ever since Eliot suggested they go away for a while. “They’re up to something,” he tells Ariadne in their hotel room that morning, but of course she just purrs contentedly. Eliot’s taken to grooming her the same way he does Cythera, and it always leaves her a useless furry puddle for a good hour after. 

It… more or less makes Quentin equally useless, but sometimes he manages to have a coherent thought. 

They’re in San Francisco, partly because both of them have always wanted to go and partly because it’s something of an escape from the heat of New York City. The second day they were here, they even needed the jackets they brought. It’s wonderful, and they poked around like the most ridiculous tourists for days.

That was June - they were here for Pride and then rented a car to wander along the coast, Ariadne and Cythera curled together in the backseat. Eliot did more of the driving than Quentin - he likes it, and Quentin is a nervous driver but a good navigator by map. You’d think GPS would solve that problem, but somehow, they’re both cursed when it comes to that thing and every time they try to use it they end up lost. 

So, maps it is. 

Back in San Francisco the day before Quentin’s birthday, it turns out there’s a magicians’ museum here, hidden as a secondhand bookstore. They spend most of his birthday there, wandering the exhibits and Eliot taking pictures of Quentin writing notes in a little notebook that he sends to Margo. Margo video-calls them once they’re out of the museum, to wish Quentin a happy birthday and also to tease him for studying on his birthday, Talaus’ big head popping up over her shoulder. 

Still, the day is… mostly like all the other days, except for the cupcake Eliot woke him up with this morning. Quentin knows Eliot, so he knows something’s up. Even if he didn’t, Cythera’s tail is lashing all day, and her ears are twitchy. She’s wired up about something. 

Around sunset they make their way to Ocean Beach, the water and sand and the cliffs that rise up beside the beach turned red and gold and bronze in the fading light. Now Eliot seems as nervous as Cythera, and Quentin frowns a little, worried now. He fidgets with the rings on his fingers - he swapped a few months ago so that the green ring is on his left hand, the black one on his right. 

Ariadne twines around his ankles and he knows she’s worried too. “El? Everything OK?” he asks.

“Cythera, you’ve been edgy all day. What’s wrong?” Ariadne adds, leaving him to nuzzle up to Cythera instead, who sits in the sand and lowers her head to bury her face in Ariadne’s fur. Quentin watches them, and for a moment doesn’t register Eliot moving out of the corner of his eye. But then he does and -

He turns to face Eliot properly, then. Eliot, who is down on one knee. “El -?” 

“I feel like, that day we went to Coney Island, that day we looked out at Brighton Beach and I told you about the first time I saw the ocean? The first time I saw you draw me? It feels like that was the moment we started to find each other again, so it felt right.” Eliot reaches for Quentin’s hand, the left hand with its green ring, and he works it off Quentin’s finger like he once did in their bed at night, only to put it back on again. 

Like a promise, he’d said. 

This time, he slips it into a pocket, and then holds Quentin’s hand tighter. “That day let us have this, let us have now. I want now to be forever. One lifetime with you isn’t enough - two won’t be enough, but I want it anyway. All of it, the good and the bad, our daemons acting like silly kittens together, the times we laugh and the times we fight. You were right - who gets proof of concept like we’ve had, in another world or here and now? So, will you marry me?” 

Quentin laughs even as tears spill down his cheeks. “Of course, El, did you ever think I’d say otherwise?” Then he’s laughing even more, breathless, as Eliot springs back to his feet and pulls him close, spinning them both around on the sand. 

“Well. Marriage isn’t the kind of thing you assume, Quentin,” Eliot says as he takes Quentin’s hand and slips a new ring onto his finger. Silver, set with an oval of jade the same color as his old ring. “I thought you’d like it to match,” Eliot explains, and then he isn’t saying anything because Quentin catches hold of his tie and uses it to pull him into a kiss. 

Dimly, he can hear their daemons purring somewhere behind them.

  
  


**_(v) when i’m way up here, it’s crystal clear_ **

“Do you think it’s their birthday too?” Ariadne asks, and Quentin shrugs, stroking a hand down his daemon’s back. Below, in the gardens, his white-haired necromancer counterpart is walking with his Eliot, their heads close together and their daemons at their heels. 

“I have no idea. He died and came back to life, what even counts as his birthday anymore?”

“Now that sounds existential,” calls a voice from the doorway even as a larger feline slides out from the shadows on the balcony to twine around Quentin’s legs. Quentin sighs, closing his eyes at Cythera’s familiar greeting, then shivering as another jolt runs through him. He opens his eyes already knowing what he’ll see - Ariadne has leapt up into Eliot’s arms where she purrs contentedly. 

“I mean, having been faced with our counterparts, I might be feeling a little existential,” Quentin admits. “What’s up?” 

“You’re missing your party - such as it is,” Eliot says, dramatically rolling his eyes. “You and Alice, insisting on keeping it quiet, honestly. You’re royalty, you should embrace it!” 

“We embrace it plenty, take it up with Perdix if you want to argue.” 

“I am not arguing with a winged lion, Quentin. I’ll leave that to Talaus - or Margo, actually, she’ll persuade Alice right out of fighting at all. But, honestly, I don’t know what either of us are going to do with you two nerds.” 

Quentin laughs, scritching between Cythera’s ears in the way she and Eliot both love. She purrs under his hand and Eliot’s eyelids flutter. “Well, you married me, and Margo’s marrying Alice next spring, so apparently that’s what you’re going to do with us?” 

“Mm. No regrets, darling,” Eliot says lazily, glancing over to the gardens below. “Ah, so that’s what has your attention. Those poor guys. I can’t imagine… when other-me showed up in our throne room… I was glad you weren’t there, I can’t imagine what it might have been like if he’d seen you.” 

“You should have seen them at those ruins. I still don’t understand why that old cottage meant so much to them, though it reminded me of a bit in one of the books. Jane gets the Time Key at the Mosaic, from the old man who lives there…” 

Eliot kisses him quiet. “You can tell me all about it later. Now come on, it might be boring but it’s your birthday dinner and you are  _ still late.” _

So Quentin lets himself be towed inside with their daemons laughing as they follow, because heaven forbid he be late!

  
  


**_(vi) like dark turning into day_ **

“Do you think they know we can see them looking at us?” Eliot asks from where he’s settled on a garden bench, Ariadne curled up in his lap. The feeling of her fur under his fingers, the sight of Quentin in front of him - these still feel like miracles, even without the way Quentin is casually petting Cythera. 

“I don’t think they care,” Quentin says, pushing his hair out of his eyes. It’s still odd to Eliot’s eyes; the white hair, just like the black tips to Ariadne’s tail and ears, her black paws. But actually he is glad for that. It proves he isn't imagining them. It proves they're real.

“It’s his birthday, apparently. Other-you, I mean. Does that make it yours as well?” 

“I have no idea. Maybe I should count my birthday in September now - that’s when they brought me back one world over, after all.” 

Eliot wasn’t there for that, the mirror trick and splitting a Quentin and Ariadne who had accidentally become two in one. He wasn’t there the day his Quentin came back, and they both had to reality-jump yet again to find each other. But they’re here now, they met again at the place where once they lived a life as if for once destiny isn’t bullshit, and now… 

“We can celebrate whenever you like, if we can do it at home. I’m not the only one who wants to see you, baby.” 

Quentin turns back to look at him, a trembling smile on his face. “We’re scared,” Ariadne admits when Quentin can’t seem to find the words, and Eliot looks down at his lap where she’s peering up at him with eyes glowing just a little in the growing darkness. “It’s been so long… do we still... have a place?” 

“You will _always_ have a place,” Cythera says fiercely before Eliot can say the same thing. “And the fact that you doubt it only proves we need to get you home so that we can show you.” 

Quentin drops onto the bench next to Eliot, threading their fingers together and laying his head on Eliot’s shoulder. Eliot rests his head on Quentin’s and looks around at this Whitespire garden that isn’t theirs, and he thinks that they do need to go home, but for now, with Quentin holding his hand and Ariadne curled on his lap, with Cythera resting against Quentin’s legs, this is home anyway. 

Maybe it’s that other Quentin and Ariadne’s birthday, but maybe it’s also a birthday for  _ them _ , all four of them; a fresh start.

He likes that thought.

  
  


**_(vii) flown so far beyond my reach_ **

_ “It was his spell, Bambi. We only were able to make this place because of him. So we’re declaring him a Prince. It’s the least we can do for him. For now.”  _

_ “What do you mean for now, Eliot? _

_ “I mean, as soon as things settle, I’m getting him back.” _

  
  


The voyage back is as near-uneventful as the original trip had been wild. Quentin is happy enough to see Coriakin again, but he’s curious about the Lone Islands. He’d joined the crew after their stop here, and he’s heard all about how they overturned the slave trade when Caspian, the Pevensies, and Eustace were captured. 

When they dock, the crew scatters. Caspian and Edmund vanish together and Quentin smiles to himself, happy for them even if it stings a little. He considers finding Kirel but for now he’d rather be alone. He wanders the markets, and is eyeing a set of drawing sticks - he thinks they’re basically charcoal and colored pencils, but ‘drawing sticks’ is what the vendor calls them. 

He has some coins in his pocket, but he isn’t sure he really wants to take up art again. Also, can he really justify buying something on a whim when he hasn’t even really started his full-time job yet? 

That’s when he hears a herald crying the date - July 20. 

July 20?

He wonders if he’s twenty-seven or twenty-eight, at this point. He thinks he was only dead a few months, so twenty-seven, probably.

He reaches into his pocket for the coins, and hands over three to the vendor. At another he buys three books of thick white paper, and at another he buys two spiced honey cakes. Why not? It’s his birthday, after all, and he’s alive for it. Even if he has no one to celebrate with just now, he can mark it for himself, can’t he? 

_ “We checked - King Edmund’s telling the truth. Quentin’s alive.”  _

_ “You could sound happier about that, Alice.” _

_ “I am happy, Eliot, but why didn’t he come back to us?” _

_ “We’ll find out, and then we’ll bring him home. That’s what matters.”  _

  
  


**_(viii) through an endless diamond sky_ **

Usually, Quentin is a late sleeper, but this particular morning finds him up with the dawn, restless, settling on the observation platform of Whitespire’s tallest tower and trying to sketch the sunrise. It’s not a totally unfamiliar thing - he still gets the dreams sometimes, and he can’t sleep once they wake him, can’t stay in bed. 

He’s gotten very good at sneaking out even when he’s in the middle. 

As ever, when he’s drawing in this mood, whatever he sets out to capture only fills part of the page, a pretty pink-purple-gold sunrise in the center of the white space, but other things along the edge. A pair of eyes, blue irises edged in gold (it makes him think of the rim of gold around his own pupils that they still don’t understand) peer out from a space near the fold of the sketchbook. Petals, purple and yellow, fall from the right corner down the edge of the page.

A pair of hands - he thinks his and El’s - clasped together, and he drew a firework behind them to symbolize energy, he doesn’t quite understand it but it seems right. 

“Dreams again?” 

Quentin turns to see Eliot stepping out onto the platform. His hair is smoothed down from its usual bedhead but he’s still dressed only in one of his long caftan-robes. In the privacy of their bedchambers (technically, they mostly use Eliot’s but the High Queen and the secondary King do still have their own apartments in the castle) Eliot never bothers with them. If he bothers with anything, it’s one of those short robes designed to drive a person mad. 

Margo’s no better - hers are longer, but  _ sheer. _

Quentin tells them both, often, that it’s a miracle his head hasn’t exploded between the two of them by now. They just laugh at him, but that’s all right. 

But, anyway, Eliot does like the longer robes when he declares it too early for real clothes, and sunrise is one of those times. Quentin smiles, waving him over to the bench where he sits. “Just a few, not a big deal. They’re weird, but hey. I’m used to it by now.” 

He’s pretty sure the dreams and the hunches that started after he woke from his coma back in their first year have saved their lives a few times. Sometimes he can almost grasp a more solid dream, something that would tell him exactly what happened - he can picture himself golden-eyed, or missing a leg, but nothing better, nothing that makes sense - but for the most part he doesn’t try anymore. 

Eliot wraps an arm around his shoulders and Quentin tucks himself closer with a sigh. “You guys didn’t plan anything too elaborate today, did you?” 

“We should have, you’re turning thirty. But, alas, you and Alice and Penny are boring.” 

“Penny’s not even royal!” Quentin laughs. 

“We did make him a lord. And eventually he’s gonna be a royal consort, whenever his or Alice’s patience with Tick’s attempts at political betrothals finally runs out,” Eliot says lightly. “Alas, even then he will still continue to be boring.” 

“Don’t you and Margo get enough out of your own huge Events? Because really, you’d think two royal gala birthdays a year is enough for anyone.”

“Hmph. You would be wrong if you think that. Now, come on, back to bed with you. Your High King commands it. Your High Queen would too, except she wasn’t about to move out of bed this early.” 

“I’m not gonna fall back to sleep,” Quentin points out even as he lets Eliot pull him to his feet. The dangerous little grin he gets in response still makes his pulse race - always will, he thinks, the same way as Margo’s most wicked laughter still sends the best kind of shivers up his spine.

“My darling little king, who said anything about going back to bed for  _ sleep _ ?”

  
  


**_(ix) it’s enough for this wide-eyed wanderer_ **

Quentin adjusts his crutches on his arms, then makes his way out of the shower, to find Eliot at the little table in his room, setting up - 

“Is that a cake?” he asks, bewildered. “What’s the occasion?” 

Eliot laughs, rolling his eyes, then blinks as he realizes Quentin was serious about that. “Wait, you… actually don’t know?” he asks. 

“Wouldn’t have asked if I did, El.”

“Happy twenty-seventh birthday, Q,” Eliot says, very dry, and Quentin blinks once. Twice.

“Oh,” he says. 

“Oh indeed. How exactly do you miss your own birthday?” Eliot teases as Quentin makes his way over to the little table. There’s not just a cake, there’s also food - fast food of all things, Quentin’s favorite order. Eliot usually hates this stuff - or claims to, though Quentin suspects it’s something of an act. The question must show on his face because Eliot rolls his eyes again. 

“Given you’re stuck with hospital food, even junk like this is a treat right now, and easier to carry,” he says, wiggling his cane. “Also, you like it for whatever reason, which means for today I’ll tolerate it.” 

“Uh-huh,” Quentin laughs. “To answer your question, I miss my own birthday by being in a place where all the days are the same so they blur together, and I’ve been busy, you know. Therapy is hard.” 

“I know, but if I didn’t tease you’d think something was wrong.” 

Now, that much is true. But Quentin still makes a face at him. He also hooks his existing ankle around Eliot’s good one under the table, so it’s obvious he’s not actually angry. Eliot grins at him over cheap fast food and a cake that, if Quentin knows Eliot, is probably made from scratch, and for a moment - 

God, for a moment he wants desperately for this to be more than two friends who were once life partners, he wants them to be partners for true again, but… But this is good, this is more than good, and it’s his birthday. He doesn’t want to upend things today, he just wants to enjoy the moment.

Tomorrow they start testing different prosthetics on him, to see what design will work when he gets his own. Maybe a good day before that will bring him luck.

He’s right - Eliot definitely made the chocolate spice cake himself, because no one else knows how to make it exactly right, if at all.

(And by next year, they'll be together again in every possible way.)

  
  


**_(x) i’ll chase them anywhere, there’s time to spare_ **

Eliot spent Quentin’s twenty-seventh birthday in London, wandering the city half-drunk before coming back to his hotel room to get the rest of the way drunk and watch the ceiling spin above him. He remembers more of the day than he’d like to, remembers how he’d felt like he failed because Quentin wasn’t back in time for his birthday. 

But for Quentin’s twenty-eighth birthday, he wakes up to his boyfriend wrapped around him like a human octopus, still out cold. Quentin has never been much of a morning person, but Eliot knows a good way to wake him up. He just has to get him on his back first. But for the moment he doesn’t, absently tracing the lines of ink on Quentin’s back that shape bird wings, a tattoo he’d gotten almost as soon as he stopped needing the walker, before he’d regained his ability to speak. 

“Ngh,” Quentin grumbles, pressing his face into Eliot’s chest as if hiding from the morning. “Tickles.” 

“Sorry, babe. Just admiring the ink.” 

“‘S not like it’s new, El,” Quentin sighs, but lifts his head to offer a sleepy smile. “But ‘m always glad you like it.” His voice is rougher than it used to be - it will probably always have that slight scratch to it - but it’s still him, still the voice Eliot grew old listening to once and fully intends to again.

Quentin looks so soft and vaguely grumpy at being woken, that familiar line between his brows, that Eliot can’t do anything but kiss him, slow and sweet. Both of them have the usual morning sourness, but it hardly matters as they move together, still under the blankets in the morning sun. 

They get up eventually, and Eliot makes French toast while Quentin makes coffee, and if they play footie under the table while they eat, well, who cares? “The others are coming over for dinner, but we have the day to ourselves. Want to go back to bed?” Eliot asks, all innocence. 

“Has that innocent act ever worked for you?” Quentin teases. 

“Ha! As if you’re better.” 

“I mean, obviously,” Quentin says even as he grabs Eliot by the hand to tow him back to their bedroom. Eliot laughs all the way there, loud enough that the sound echoes off the walls. 

They do eventually get up in time for Eliot to give Quentin his gift - an amateur jeweler’s kit so he can start doing things a little more elaborate with his glass and crystal pieces. 

Everyone actually makes it over for dinner and cake, which is a bit of a surprise - Eliot hadn’t been sure Julia would be there, but there she is in their kitchen, appearing in a flicker of silver light. He’s a little annoyed by the fact that she never thought to tell anyone she was definitely coming, but the way Quentin lights up at the sight of her makes up for it. 

Even Alice makes it, bringing her brother along. Eliot knows that it’s one of the first outings Charlie has been up for, and he doesn’t say much, his too-blue eyes darting around as he takes everything in, but Quentin sits with him and Alice for a good half-hour, all three of them looking more at ease by the end of it. 

“The ex-magical beings conference,” Eliot tells Margo, and she grins at him. 

“Hey, good for them,” she says, and he can’t argue with that. 

Once they all leave, Eliot twists his hand in an easy tut so that music fills the air and he grabs Quentin’s hand to pull him off the couch. “Eliot, what are you doing?” Quentin laughs as he drops the first-edition book Kady found him to the couch. 

“Dancing with you.” 

“You know I can’t dance - except those festival dances -” 

Eliot sees it, the moment recognition of the tune dawns on Quentin. “Oh,” he says, eyes suddenly overbright. “El…” 

They dance together, furniture moved to the wall by Eliot’s power - he pushes one lamp a little too hard but the crack is soon fixed by Quentin’s magic. Hand to hand and spinning into each other as they used to do by torchlight in another life, and they’re both breathless and laughing when they fall to the carpet after. 

And if, by the time they get off the carpet, they have to use magic to avoid needing to deep clean it, well. Whose business is that but theirs?

  
  


**_(xi) the twisting kaleidoscope moves us all in turn_ **

They fell asleep with the light on. They do that a lot, actually. The human world still feels too dark, after a world of magic, a world of lights in every color the human mind can imagine, and some it can’t. 

Quentin is glad of it, though, when he wakes up feeling edgy. He slips out of bed, wriggling down the middle carefully so that he doesn’t wake Eliot or Margo up. He watches them for a moment as they shift closer together in the warm space he left. He doesn’t know if they would have ever been quite like this, if things had been different. They were together before they became Niffins, of course, but he remembers it was more like they shared him, and their friendship was intimate long before he got there so he’s not sure much had changed. 

Since they came back… 

They were more one being than three, when they were Niffins. It’s what happens when you Niffin out together during a cooperative cast, apparently. That’s been the hardest thing. Not the dimness, not the cool air where once there had been magic’s fire. The  _ silence  _ of being alone in their heads once more. The strange  _ incompleteness  _ of being three solid bodies, separate from each other.

Doing magic together eases the loss. A psychic spell that lets them talk to each other - at will only - eases the loss. And being lovers together eases it, soothes the physical lack of disconnect in a way nothing else can, if only for a little while. 

Quentin wraps one of Eliot’s robes around himself, not bothering with any other clothes. He still aches in a way that makes him feel pleasantly lazy, even as he curls into the chair by the bed and summons his sketchbook and colored pencils from under the cushions. They’re beautiful in the soft lamplight - they always have been, since the moment he saw them, and he’s still in awe of it - and while usually he’d behave himself, the reason he’s so achy and the reason he was in the middle is because it’s his birthday today. 

Well. Probably yesterday by now. It doesn’t really matter. Sometimes he thinks none of their original birthdays count anymore, that the only day that matters is the day they fell to Earth again with all the other Niffins, human and in possession of their shades once more. 

(No one knows why, even now. Quentin suspects that Gold Boy, his strange not-quite-Niffin counterpart, has something to do with it. He’d sensed that presence again in the moment before it happened, and his own eyes are too-bright blue as some others of their ex-Niffin fellows are, except that unlike them the edges of his irises are gold. He remembers golden fire reminding him for a dizzying moment what it was to feel as one with a shade might, and he knows the gold comes from that moment.)

But, a birthday is still an excuse to be indulgent, so Eliot and Margo both tell him, and he thinks he can have a little more. They came back to a bleak world, so why not take the bright moments where he can? 

So he sketches his lovers where they’re asleep on the bed, and he doesn’t bother to be embarrassed by the fact that he’s drawing them nude. No one but the three of them see this sketchbook anyway. He’s shading in the colors of Eliot’s back half in shadow, paying close attention to the marks on his skin. His own reminder of what they were comes in blue lightning marks traced on his skin, blue lines fanned out over his back to look almost like wings.

“Are you drawing us like one of your French girls? Didn’t we tire you out?” 

Margo is grinning when Quentin looks at her, sly and amused. Her hair is white now, snowy except where the light hits it and brings out a blue sheen to the curls. He isn’t sure how he’ll manage to bring that out with colored pencil, but he’ll have to try. He might need paint to do it justice, though. They play mundane these days, and Quentin is in art school - he’ll figure something out.

“Oh, I’m still feeling good. Just restless. I wanted to draw you.” 

“Well, come back over here and let me see what you have so far.”

“No,” Quentin laughs, pressing the book to his chest. “Not until it’s done. Then I promise I’ll show you.”

“Fine,” Margo sighs, closing her eyes and pretending to go back to sleep. Quentin smiles down at the page as he goes back to tracing Eliot’s lightning wings first in one shade of blue, then another as he tries to capture it just right. 

“Could you teach me?” Margo asks, and Quentin looks up. Her eyes are still closed, but a certain tension in her body makes it clear she’s awake. 

“What?” 

“I never really liked art class, I was always bored as shit. But sometimes… Talking about it isn’t enough, and I see the pages you fill with the things you remember. I think it might help, sometimes.” 

“It might,” Quentin agrees softly. He never quite thinks he does the Niffin-memories justice, but he does think he captures Earth-sights well enough. And everything he draws makes him feel more real. If it might help Margo, that is a good thing. He needs them to be real as he is, he needs them to stay with him. 

They’re still one, and he worries. At least this is a way he can help, and that is another birthday gift, though he won’t tell her that.

  
  


**_(xii) ever just as sure_ **

The backlash knocks them all to the floor and for a moment Eliot just lays there, dazed. For a moment he could have sworn he was echoes of other selves, versions he’s never been with different lives (and were those animals beside them a couple times?) but always, always with Quentin at his side. 

Does that mean it worked? Surely it has to -

A choked gasp, an uncertain little cry has him scrambling to his feet, to where Quentin is sitting up on the table, hands pressed to his head as he fights to breathe. “Hey, hey, baby, it’s all right,” Eliot says, not even thinking before he pulls Quentin in close. He struggles for a moment, making little confused sounds, then settles. 

“Breathe with me, OK?” Eliot says, soft, and bit by bit Quentin relaxes as he matches Eliot’s careful breaths, as matching it teaches him, how again. 

“I - I don’t understand - how -” Quentin croaks, trembling in Eliot’s arms. 

“You’re back. We got you back. Happy birthday, baby,” Eliot whispers, and he thinks he might be laughing and crying all at the same time. In a minute he’ll have to let go, he’s not the only person who will want to welcome Q back, will want to hug him close to prove he’s real, but for now - 

For now he’s not letting go just yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter. 
> 
> Or, if you are RP-inclined, I have a Quentin RP sideblog at cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com :)


End file.
